Sandy Bridge (i7/H67) and connected screens

[Robert Kaiser <kairo@kairo.at>]

Hi,

I decided to support the open source driver (and even MeeGo) engagement 
of Intel by buying some from the company, and now I have a shiny new 
DH67CL mainboard (yes, I know, B2, need to swap to a B3 once they're in 
stores here) and Core i7-2600K processor.

When trying to get to run my openSUSE Factory system with this beauty's 
IGP and Intel graphics drivers, it failed miserably though, giving me a 
black screen as soon as the kernel (both 2.6.37.x and 2.6.38-rcX) loads 
the Intel driver - though everything seems to load behind this eternal 
blackness. I can Ctrl+Alt+F1 to the first text console, log in as root 
and reboot (all in the blind, of course). For now, I'd adding 
nomodeset=1 in the GRUB prompt so that I at least can work with the 
system using vesafb, but clearly, that's not what I'd like.

Even a long overdue switch of the system from 32bit to 64bit didn't 
change the situation.

/var/log/messages doesn't show any interesting entries, but I found 
something of interest in an Xorg log from when the Intel driver has been 
active:

[    51.921] (II) intel(0): Integrated Graphics Chipset: Intel(R) 
Sandybridge
[    51.921] (--) intel(0): Chipset: "Sandybridge"
[    51.921] (**) intel(0): Tiling enabled
[    51.921] (**) intel(0): SwapBuffers wait disabled
[    51.921] (==) intel(0): video overlay key set to 0x101fe
[    51.921] (II) intel(0): Output VGA1 using monitor section Default 
Monitor 0
[    51.921] (II) intel(0): Output HDMI1 has no monitor section
[    51.922] (II) intel(0): Output DP1 has no monitor section
[    51.922] (II) intel(0): Output HDMI2 has no monitor section
[    51.923] (II) intel(0): Output DP2 has no monitor section
[    51.923] (II) intel(0): EDID for output VGA1
[    51.923] (II) intel(0): EDID for output HDMI1
[    51.924] (II) intel(0): EDID for output DP1
[    51.924] (II) intel(0): EDID for output HDMI2
[    51.925] (II) intel(0): EDID for output DP2
[    51.925] (II) intel(0): Output VGA1 disconnected
[    51.925] (II) intel(0): Output HDMI1 disconnected
[    51.925] (II) intel(0): Output DP1 disconnected
[    51.925] (II) intel(0): Output HDMI2 disconnected
[    51.925] (II) intel(0): Output DP2 disconnected
[    51.925] (WW) intel(0): No outputs definitely connected, trying again...
[    51.925] (II) intel(0): Output VGA1 disconnected
[    51.925] (II) intel(0): Output HDMI1 disconnected
[    51.925] (II) intel(0): Output DP1 disconnected
[    51.925] (II) intel(0): Output HDMI2 disconnected
[    51.925] (II) intel(0): Output DP2 disconnected
[    51.925] (WW) intel(0): Unable to find connected outputs - setting 
1024x768 initial framebuffer


Now, actually, the board has two connectors for video, one DVI and one 
HDMI, and I have two monitors connected, an older 1280x1024 LCD and a 
newer 1920x1080 touchscreen LCD - no matter which one I connect to which 
of the two connectors (using an HDMI-to-DVI cable fr the HDMI one), the 
situation is the same, all black with the Intel driver.
Interestingly, even in the BIOS and with vesafb, I always only get 
output on the newer widescreen, never on the old one, no matter which is 
connected where - so both cables and both connectors work at least in 
some configuration, closing them out as failure points.
I updated the BIOS to the newest version from Intel, didn't help either, 
though.

As a note, this is the version info from xpyinfo:
vendor release number:    10903000
X.Org version: 1.9.3

Is this a driver, configuration or even hardware problem? How can I find 
out? Can I force the kernel or X to assume that screens are connected?

I'd really love to get proper graphics working and don't shy away from 
trying some updated rpms for openSUSE Factory, but I'd like to avoid 
having to compile the kernel or Xorg or so, as my work time is needed to 
move Mozilla forward...

Robert Kaiser